The Madness of Jack Thompson

Yes, you could say he’s a true Renaissance Man - at least in terms of trying to stifle free speech and creative expression.

Jacky Boy’s been amusing for a while now, but recently, he’s gotten even more hilarious to watch. Earlier this month, he put forth “A Modest Videogame Proposal” - wherein he offered to donate $10,000 to a charity named by Take Two Interactive’s Paul Eibeler if someone were to “create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006″ that met specific criteria he laid out. Some snippets:

Osaki Kim is the father of a high school boy beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer. The killer obsessively played a violent video game in which one of the favored ways of killing is with a bat.

…

O.K. first hops a plane from LAX to New York to reach the Long Island home of the CEO of the company (Take This) that made the murder simulator on which his son’s killer trained. O.K. gets “justice” by taking out this female CEO, whose name is Paula Eibel, along with her husband and kids. “An eye for an eye,” says O.K., as he urinates onto the severed brain stems of the Eibel family victims, just as you do on the decapitated cops in the real video game Postal2.

O.K. then works his way, methodically back to LA by car, but on his way makes a stop at the Philadelphia law firm of Blank, Stare and goes floor by floor to wipe out the lawyers who protect Take This in its wrongful death law suits. “So sue me” O.K. spits, with singer Jackson Brown’s 1980’s hit Lawyers in Love blaring.

Of course, O.K. makes the obligatory runs to virtual versions of brick and mortar retailers Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and Wal-Mart to steal supplies and bludgeon store managers and cash register clerks. “You should have checked kids’ IDs!”

O.K. pushes on to Los Angeles. He must get there by May 10, 2006. That is the beginning of “E3″ — the Electronic Entertainment Expo — the Super Bowl of the video game industry. O.K. must get to E3 to massacre all the video game industry execs with one final, monstrously delicious rampage.

Now, I will admit - a murderous rampage WOULD make E3 more interesting, but Thompson’s clearly not trying to simply spice up a boring industry event here. He wants to have my boss killed and I don’t like that, because my boss pays me and I like money.

Of course, in short order, a number of people whipped up games that met all of his requirements. Jack - not surprisingly - refused to make good on his offer.